Text Input

The Acer Iconia 6120's signature feature is the second screen where a keyboard would be on a normal laptop. The virtual keyboard is very good, certainly one of the best I've ever used, but there's no getting away from the fact that you're typing on a piece of glass, with no tactile feedback at all. The meanest, cheapest $5 throw-away keyboard at your local office supply store is infinitely better. That being the case, Acer does their best to make a case for why you should put up with this. First, I'll cover the input system.

Virtual Keyboard

You have four ways to enter text on the Iconia 6120; each method has its advantages and disadvantages:

Acer's virtual keyboard

Microsoft's "On screen keyboard" widget

Handwriting recognition

Plugging in an external USB keyboard

You invoke the Acer virtual keyboard either by pressing the keyboard button in the left hinge, or (and this is much cooler, especially if you're showing the computer to someone) by simply placing your hands on the lower screen in a typing position, letting all 10 fingers rest on the glass at the same time.

As you can see from the image above, the virtual keyboard and track pad occupy the entire lower screen. This means the key size and key spacing are the same as a "real" keyboard, which makes it easier to type on. Only the function keys are shrunk to make room for some extra controls at the top of the keyboard. At the upper left are controls for switching between the virtual keyboard and the handwriting input panel, enabling and disabling the track pad and the T9 predictive text feature, and opening the keyboard control panel. At the upper right are media playback controls and the keyboard close button (a large "X").

With a touch-sensitive keyboard, Acer had to deal with the problem of parts of your hand resting on the glass. You don't want this to enter characters you didn't type! Their solution is to only register a keystroke when you stop touching a key, and only if less than a certain amount of time has elapsed. If you touch a key too long, removing your finger doesn't cause a character to be typed. This works well but lends a certain, subtle cognitive dissonance to using the keyboard: the key click sound is played when you touch a key, but the character isn't entered until you stop touching a key. I found the disconnect between the time of the sound and the time when the character appeared to be slightly unnerving, but it's something you can get used to. After a few days' experience, I can type on the Iconia's virtual keyboard about 70 percent as fast, overall, as I can on a physical keyboard. In fact, much of this review was typed directly on the Iconia.

Note, though, that the virtual keyboard is useless for many games. For example, although Valve's "Portal" plays well enough, you can't move your character with the WASD keys, since holding down a key doesn't register as it does with a physical keyboard. And a physical keyboard is the only workaround for this.

The virtual trackpad below the keyboard works as you'd expect, with left and right buttons and a dedicated scroll area at its right edge. Although Acer claims that mouse motions started inside the touchpad area will be continued if your finger drags outside the touchpad area, this didn't work for me: the mouse cursor simply stopped after I hit the edge of the touch pad. This is harder to deal with since the lack of tactile feedback means that you have no idea where your finger is on the touchpad area. You can, of course, simply plug in an external pointing device, but the virtual trackpad has one significant advantage: it "knows" that when you're using it, the bottom screen's a keyboard rather than a general purpose display device, and it won't let you drag the cursor down off the upper screen. External pointing devices don't constrain the cursor and it's easy to "lose" the cursor on the keyboard screen.

The keyboard offers T9 predictive text input by touching a control at the upper left of its display. T9 will consult its internal dictionary on the fly, as you type, and offer both suggestions for completed words and auto-correct many common misspellings. It can significantly increase your typing speed on the virtual keyboard, but it also sometimes gets in the way. For example, it insists on trying to correct the word "Iconia" to "Icons". You can backspace and re-type the word, but that adds time and is frustrating, and there seems to be no way to add news words like "Iconia" to the dictionary. I went back and forth and wound up turning it off.

An external keyboard provides the best input speed and accuracy, but somewhat obviates the point of the Iconia. Still, I found this setup to be a workable one:

Using a stand designed for the Apple iPad, I was able to use the Iconia as a dual-screen system with an external mouse and keyboard.

If the virtual keyboard isn't to your taste, touching the little keyboard icon at the upper left of the screen will invoke a very capable handwriting recognition input system.

You can write with your finger or a capacitive stylus in the yellow area, and use editing and other keys on the right. The handwriting feature supports a number of useful editing gestures that you can use to split or join groups of letters, erase text, and pop up a menu of word suggestions. And the handwriting recognition itself is brilliant, about the best I've ever seen on any device.

But the handwriting panel isn't really very useful. In my opinion, handwriting input only really makes sense when you can write anywhere on the screen. Since the handwriting input panel occupies the entire lower screen, there's no space advantage over using the virtual keyboard, which will provide much faster text entry for most applications.

Comments

I hope they continue in this direction till feasible/powerful technology becomes available. along with powerful harware a dual screen slate but with wacom cintiq sensitivity drawing and I would buy as much today easily( Acer is in danger of becoming great )

Intel graphics for 2 monitors? And how come the cheap and weak 3000maH battery is not user-replaceable? Why even bother giving a battery from the first place?And, don't believe in the stability of hybrid USBs. Let alone in the known-for-not- being-so-durable Acer units. Thank you for the review that reveals how spooky the laptop is.Will wait for at least 3rd generation of this product before even start looking at it seriously.Indonesian Acer users don't really need Bluetooth v3.0, and most that I know don't even need an internal Bluetooth at alol. External USB Bluetooth is already satisfying as well as easily replaceable in the case of any damage/malfunctioning, since durability is not Acer?s brag-ables anyway, is it? BTv3 is a cheap marketing trick initiated by Toshiba as a cover-up for their poor-sounding (Conexant audio!) and poor imaging (bad webcams) but yet expensive laptops. Yet no one buys Toshiba for that reason!

The Battery is replaceable.. the reviewer was incorrect in assuming it was built in.. the Battery is in the hinge and can easily be removed or replaced by simply pushing in the two tabs and pulling the battery out.

Very good review.I agree, a user replaceable battery is a must.This looks like it has a lot of promise as a dual screen system if you just add a keyboard, and allow the user to look at the system sideways.

The Iconia will not let you rotate or change the relative positions of the displays: they must be in "landscape" mode with Display 1 above Display 2.

Actually, you can change this, but when you do, you get an error dialog warning that the positions and rotations of the displays cannot be changed, and then after about 15 seconds, they switch back automatically.

I assume this is because most of ASUS' included software (like the various Touch apps) require this configuration.

I haven't had any problems with the gesture editor, although I haven't used it since the review. Since it can only be invoked from the Acer Ring utility, and _that_ utility can't be invoked when the virtual keyboard is up, it makes for too many steps: dismiss keyboard, invoke Acer Ring, draw gesture. Nah.

Hi. I have this laptop and altough the keyboard animatiions are pretty slow, whe character gets written faster than the animations starts playing. I am impreessed by its performance.

Until now I didn'ti have any problems playing games with arrow keys nor awsd.

Battery CAN be removed, but you have to ipen the coverplate so that you can press 2 buttons. It even have the lock key for battery ((at first I thought I can't remove battery too), but I think there are a lot of alternatives to the build in battery performance (UPS for example - #en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply) or external battery. In case you are watching a movie, you can of course turn off it's second monitor (they can be turned off one or another, or both). My record of battery usage is nearly 3 hours of watching movies (of course my model have even bluetooth 3.0, which models in USA don't have, at least as far as I know, but I am in europe and we have a slightly different model ...)

And best of, the price wasn't even that high ... only 850? (which is something like normal laptops cost in my country - Slovenia).

does any one please have a recovery disk done for the iconia dual screen, mine wont get past setup before it shuts down and restarts, and i have no keypad to get past language set up when trying to do a repair with windows 7 disk. or does any one know how to recover from boot up please.

If you bought Acer Iconia, you have already installed acer eRecovery manager. Open it up and there you will see the option to cretate the factory default disk. However, if youhave already been using your PC, Acer have left the backup n a hidden partition on your PC. Click on Completely restore system to factory defaults. It will use these data. And than you can create a disk with factory defaults items installed.

what if there is no data in a hidden partition on my pc? any other way to set it to factory defaults?If I install windows on it again, Ill probably need the programs for the touch pad and acer ring right?

The only way to delete the recovery partition on the Iconia hard disk is to completely reformat it. But whatever...

Yes, if you reinstall Windows, you'll need to reinstall the Iconia utilities and drivers.

If you don't have a recovery partition and can't make the install disk set, then you need to go to Acer's web site to find and download the software. But I just looked and wasn't able to find anything about the "Iconia 6120", so you might be out of luck there. I suppose you could always call Acer tech support.

If you in your explorer settings change "Show hidden folders and files" to yes, do you have a "OEM" folder on you "C:" drive? If you do, go to:"C:\OEM\Preload\Autorun\AutorunX\". Inside that folder look for a file called "AutorunX.exe". Run it, click on "Contents" and install all files you see on the list that appears.

If you don't, please reply and I will try compressing it for you (it is 3 gigabytes large). Hope this helps.

Sorry that it took me that long ... :(Anyway, here it finally is:#ardentangel.com/iconia/OEM.rar

Extract it to your C:\ drive directly (using Extract here option)After that, go to "C:\OEM\Preload\Autorun\AutorunX\" and launch the program called "AutorunX.exe"

Once it launched, you will be able to get a list with all drivers and applications (programs) to install (which are all already included, so you won't have to redownload them), including the Touch Engine, which actually is the Virtual Keyboard and Acer Ring. There is another thing to install to get all of the Acer Ring applications on the list, if you won't be installing everything that is there (however, I advise you that you do install everything ... don't worry, there are no demo games, that are preinstalled on ICONIA once you buy it).

Anyway, I learned of the existance of this AutorunX appliacation the hard way ... Acer support sucks and they insist that there is NO WAY of getting Virtual Keyboard nor Acer Ring installation executables. But I did managed to get it after all. :)

And that's why I am helping you on the first place, because I know how they sucks now (at least the UK one ... I am from Slovenia, so US acer did not wanted to help me, since they couldn't verify my model number or whatever ...). =P

Hi, I don't know if somebody can help me, my Hard drive for my acer iconia died, so I replaced. Also, I bought the recovery cd set for the acer iconia 6120 , but when I tried to recovery it doesn't boot, It show me an error "insert a boot cd", but I inserted the first cd that is called System disc, so I don't know what is going on. please help.

Hi man I have a problem with my acer iconia I made a clean installation y installed your driver pack , so my keyboard works fine, but I have a problem with my secondary screen is weird because the keyboard works fine, but when I load acer ring it doesn't work, I mean the acer ring is showing in my screen, but I can not taping anything is like my secondary screen is not a touch screen any clue buddy, I really don't know what to do

I had the same problem after i installed a clean windows 7. I solved my prblem after I configured in control panel - Tablet PC Settings - Configure your pen and touch display. After you make this and all the calibration it will work. It worked for me so It will work for you.

can you help me with a recovery image, i installed all programs from oem folder but keyboard is not working, it makes a sound like is unavailable, touch works great , the ring works , but the keyboard dose not. i think a image of the recovery partition , ot the recovery dvd would help. please help me.

Just bought this a week ago....loving it so far. I just have ONE problem and some questions.

First....I booted up the pc for the first time and went through all the steps and to my surprise the ACER WALLPAPER (which i think is VERY cool) was not on the screen....I have looked through ALL the files and folders and cannot find this wallpaper. I am wondering if maybe I was sent the european version (i live in the us) because I also received the USB card reader which I was NOT expecting to get.

Also could someone please tell me what the DIFFEREMCES between the 2 models are and if someone could point me to where I could get that wallpaper, it would be GREATLY appreciated!

My laptop has been to Acer three times for service withing a year since o bought it. first time there were a significantly cluster of dead pixels. they replaced the upper tablet. Second rime it needed a reboot again since it went crazzy and looked as if someone was plating with all the buttoms on the keyboard. this third time it completely shut down. it also got a smaller red dots permanently lit on red, like new dead pixels. well. i involved the BBB in order to get help but Acer is reluctant to replace the unit. the only ridiculous option they gave me is ro extend the warranty one more month. i believe i got a lemon. How can I keep pushing to get the laptop replaced by a new one?

I'm afraid I don't have any advice for you, Henry. I bought the Iconia myself-- it wasn't a review unit sent by the company as are most of the products we write about. Consequently I don't have any contacts at the company.

Mine worked fine for the year or so I had it. I'm sorry you've had so many problems with yours.

I have found from ukrainean site the recovery image 16GB (PQSERVICE1, 2,3 ,4,5). I installed those 5 archive with an external DVD. I boot from this external DVD with Acronis and I recovered all, as was installed from factory. Is the russian version but with Vistlizator and english language pack I managed to have a new installation on my Acer Iconia because i bought this laptop with Windows 7 ultimate and the ring and other application does not working.

Help please!! I was able to log in to YouTube and Flicker on the socialjogger but when I try to log in to Facebook it says "success" but it really didn't. Something I try and it says "an error has occurred. Please try again later" I'm so frustrated. Why is this happening?? Is there a socialjogger reset? Thanks!!